November 10, 2018

Coal Tit sexing.

Here is another one of our common birds - a Great Tit - for my friends from Ecuador and the USA to see and enjoy. This is a bird that comes into our gardens and to the feeders that many people put out. This is worth 200 million pounds to the UK economy incidentally. Great Tits will also use nest boxes which many people put out. Compared to the Coal Tit, the Great Tit is a much bigger bird, literally twice as big by weight at 16grams. In Haldon Forest, 3 miles from my home, Coal Tits are numerous and these last few days I have been photographing them as they come constantly to a feeding station that I have set up. It is a real challenge to get a good image because they are never still and with the light not being good at this time of year it is difficult to get a sharp image because of movement. I have also been attempting to separate the male Coal Tits from the females. I have read that males have a larger dark bib which is more clearly defined but this is, as yet, not scientifically certain. It is good though to see that this species is doing so well. Yesterday I also had a Nuthatch and female Great-spotted Woodpecker and also a beautiful Chaffinch and I am hoping for Brambling but not yet.

This is probably one of the nicest images of Coal Tit that I have taken recently. I have been shooting in Raw and by doing this I have then been able to fully control all adjustments before saving as a JPeg. This has helped me to increase the sharpness of my images considerably. I am annoyed with myself for not always shooting in Raw, the reason being that the camera will take time to save the images to file in Raw and you do miss an opportunity here and there, but I do recommend shooting in Raw if you are serious about getting good photographs. Incidentally, unfortunately, Typepad blogs compress images and some of the detail in images is always lost, so you are not seeing this image at its best. To do that click on the link here https://charlesfleming.smugmug.com/British-Birds/Coal-Tits/i-xJWwScg/A

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Coal Tit sexing.

Here is another one of our common birds - a Great Tit - for my friends from Ecuador and the USA to see and enjoy. This is a bird that comes into our gardens and to the feeders that many people put out. This is worth 200 million pounds to the UK economy incidentally. Great Tits will also use nest boxes which many people put out. Compared to the Coal Tit, the Great Tit is a much bigger bird, literally twice as big by weight at 16grams. In Haldon Forest, 3 miles from my home, Coal Tits are numerous and these last few days I have been photographing them as they come constantly to a feeding station that I have set up. It is a real challenge to get a good image because they are never still and with the light not being good at this time of year it is difficult to get a sharp image because of movement. I have also been attempting to separate the male Coal Tits from the females. I have read that males have a larger dark bib which is more clearly defined but this is, as yet, not scientifically certain. It is good though to see that this species is doing so well. Yesterday I also had a Nuthatch and female Great-spotted Woodpecker and also a beautiful Chaffinch and I am hoping for Brambling but not yet.

This is probably one of the nicest images of Coal Tit that I have taken recently. I have been shooting in Raw and by doing this I have then been able to fully control all adjustments before saving as a JPeg. This has helped me to increase the sharpness of my images considerably. I am annoyed with myself for not always shooting in Raw, the reason being that the camera will take time to save the images to file in Raw and you do miss an opportunity here and there, but I do recommend shooting in Raw if you are serious about getting good photographs. Incidentally, unfortunately, Typepad blogs compress images and some of the detail in images is always lost, so you are not seeing this image at its best. To do that click on the link here https://charlesfleming.smugmug.com/British-Birds/Coal-Tits/i-xJWwScg/A